“It’s Called Your Practice, Not Your Perfect”

Today in yoga as we were flowing through our poses our instructor shared this little nugget with us: “Your poses don’t need to be perfect, just keep breathing and keep working. That is why it’s called your practice and not your perfect.” I think it bore repeating to the interwebs since it is a damn good mantra for life.

How often do we get so wrapped up in the end result of something that we forget to enjoy the journey? How often do we beat ourselves up about it not being perfect when it really doesn’t matter? How much anxiety do we cause ourselves striving for perfection?

A thing I have started working on more in my personal life and in my parenting life as well, is letting go of the idea of perfection. It is an impossible ideal and to be honest it rarely matters. Nobody is perfect and nobody ever will be, so why do we kill ourselves reaching for something so impossible?

I tell my kids end results don’t matter to me anymore. Do not kill yourself trying to earn anyone’s approval. That is not what is important in life. What matters to me is you tried. You worked hard to the best of your ability and you did your best. Your best is not the same as everyone else’s and it depends on the tools available at your disposal in that moment. It will vary from day to day. And your mental health is not worth risking for some elusive perfection that can never exist.

All of life is a practice. That is the point. It doesn’t end when we achieve perfection. It just keeps going until our time is up. So do the best you can with that time. Work hard but stay happy.

Let’s focus on being the very best we can be in the current moment with the tools available at our disposal. That is all we can really do. And it is subjective as hell so don’t you dare go beating yourself up about it. And while you are working on that cut some slack to the people around you and remember that they are working on doing the same. Some days our best doesn’t look so awesome but that doesn’t mean it’s not good enough.

Welcome

In yoga they always tell us that when thoughts or noises interrupt our practice we should notice them, let them exist without judgement, and let them go. I have adopted this mentality with a lot of things in my life and it has been invaluable. Everybody gets to make their choices and I get to make mine. I do not have to have control over what anybody else is doing and that is okay. They can do their thing, I can do mine and I do not have to judge that. It is all okay. My therapist told me I needed a mantra and I had a hard time coming up with one but lately I’ve been using “Let that shit go”. I think it is a nice combination of the calm, namaste-yoga stuff and my love of swear words. Feel free to use it if it helps you.